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Television is incestuous. Every prestige drama is a sitcom’s bastard child, every reality show has a soap opera godparent, and sometimes a cartoon rabbit is secretly raising your favourite feminist antihero. TV doesn’t evolve in straight lines — it cannibalises itself, mutates, and dresses the same archetypes in new costumes. That’s where Unhinged TV Family Trees comes in.
At first glance, Netflix’s stately monarchy epic and E!’s glossy Calabasas empire feel like they exist on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. One is wrapped in velvet curtains, constitutional protocol and the quiet suffocation of inherited duty. The other thrives on ring lights, sponsored posts and the high gloss chaos of curated authenticity.
But structurally, they are identical.
Both are long running sagas about families born into spectacle. Both centre women negotiating power in systems designed to control them. Both treat wardrobe like a language and domestic disagreements like international incidents. And both invite viewers into spaces that are technically private but permanently staged for public consumption.
Royalty by Birth, Royalty by Branding
The British monarchy never auditioned for celebrity. Their fame was constructed through centuries of empire, reinforced by ritual and preserved through tradition. The Crown presents this as a kind of generational inheritance that no one really consents to but everyone must perform.
They are dynasty shows. Just with different palaces.
The Kardashians, on the other hand, reverse engineered that same inheritance model. Their dynasty was built from media scandal, tabloid obsession and an almost academic understanding of how fame reproduces itself. Where the Windsors inherited their platform, the Kardashians manufactured one and then treated it like it had always existed.
Yet the outcome is almost indistinguishable.
Both families live inside systems that convert their personal lives into ongoing public narrative. Engagements, breakups, pregnancies, wardrobe choices, sibling rivalries, awkward dinners. All become episodic storytelling beats consumed by millions who feel both judgemental and deeply invested.
The difference is simply packaging. One calls it public duty. The other calls it content strategy.
Surveillance as Entertainment
Both shows rely on the illusion of access. The Crown offers viewers a carefully staged version of private royal life. Closed doors open just enough for audiences to believe they are witnessing history unfolding in real time. The series thrives on quiet conversations that may or may not have happened, framed as emotional truth rather than factual record.
Keeping Up perfected that same illusion years earlier.
Confessionals, staged family meetings, accidental arguments captured by conveniently placed cameras. The audience is told they are seeing authenticity, while simultaneously watching performances designed to maintain brand mythology. The cameras are always there, but so is the knowledge that the cameras are always there.
The monarchy performs for tradition. The Kardashians perform for ratings. Both perform for survival.
Because once a family becomes a symbol, privacy stops being a right and starts becoming a liability.
Costume as Diplomacy
The Crown treats fashion like geopolitical strategy. Every brooch is symbolic. Every hemline is interpreted. Diana’s wardrobe becomes a visual rebellion long before she is allowed to voice dissent publicly. The Queen’s colour palette operates as silent communication, designed so crowds can always find her. Clothing becomes policy expressed through silk and tailoring.
Keeping Up runs on the exact same mechanics, just filtered through Instagram and fashion week.
Kim’s metamorphosis from boutique stylist to Balenciaga muse is framed as personal evolution but operates as brand redefinition. Kylie’s lip kits are not just beauty products. They are economic empires built from aesthetic identity. The family wardrobe tracks power shifts the same way royal fashion tracks hierarchy and rebellion.
When Kim steps onto the Met Gala carpet in a custom Mugler gown, it functions like a state visit. The look is debated, decoded and archived in cultural memory. Fashion is not about self expression alone. It is about message control.
Both dynasties understand that the body is the first press release.
Domestic Drama, Global Stage
The emotional engine of both shows is surprisingly similar. They take deeply personal conflicts and present them as events with global consequence.
In The Crown, Charles and Diana’s marriage unravels with the weight of national identity resting on every cold dinner and icy phone call. The breakdown becomes a cultural trauma, dissected through state institutions and public loyalty.
In Keeping Up, Kim loses a diamond earring in Bora Bora and the moment becomes a meme, a brand slogan and arguably one of the most recognisable reality television scenes of the century.
Different stakes. Same storytelling formula.
The audience is invited to witness intimacy rebranded as spectacle. A family disagreement becomes narrative currency. Emotional vulnerability becomes entertainment infrastructure.
Both shows thrive on the same uncomfortable truth. We are fascinated by powerful families precisely when they fail to function like families at all.
The Women Who Carry the Crown
Neither dynasty survives without women performing impossible emotional labour.
The Crown repeatedly returns to women navigating roles designed to confine them. Elizabeth sacrifices personal identity for institutional continuity. Diana weaponises vulnerability as a form of resistance. Margaret performs rebellion as a survival tactic inside a system that punishes female autonomy.
Keeping Up reframes that same tension through entrepreneurial feminism. Kris Jenner transforms motherhood into executive leadership. Kim repackages personal scandal into business infrastructure. Khloé, Kourtney and Kylie negotiate sisterhood under the pressure of constant brand maintenance.
Both families rely on matriarchal strength while simultaneously exposing how much labour it takes to hold public dynasties together.
Why Queer Audiences Clock the Similarities First
Both families operate within camp traditions whether they intend to or not.
Camp thrives on seriousness taken to theatrical extremes. Oversized hats treated as constitutional necessity. Met Gala corsetry treated as global diplomacy. Emotional breakdowns framed with orchestral scores or slow motion camera pans. Everything is exaggerated. Everything is sincere. Everything is slightly ridiculous and completely compelling.
Queer audiences have long been fluent in reading performance layered over identity. When you grow up learning how to decode subtext for survival, it becomes easy to spot when power is being maintained through aesthetic performance.
The Windsors and the Kardashians both exist as living symbols. Their public personas are costumes worn so consistently they become mistaken for authenticity.
Both families sell the fantasy of legacy while quietly revealing how exhausting legacy actually is.
Fame as Inheritance
Perhaps the strangest parallel is how both dynasties treat attention as a birthright.
Royal children inherit global scrutiny before they understand language. Kardashian children inherit brand visibility before they understand privacy. Both grow up inside narratives written long before they are old enough to edit them.
Legacy becomes less about bloodline and more about narrative continuity. The story must continue. The dynasty must remain culturally relevant. New generations must carry forward not just wealth or status, but audience engagement.
Power is no longer maintained through territory or policy alone. It is maintained through relevance.
And relevance, in modern television, requires constant performance.
Same Dynasty, Different Palace
So yes, one family lives in Buckingham Palace while the other lives in Calabasas mansions. One waves from balconies while the other films product launches. One speaks through royal correspondence while the other posts Notes app apologies.
But they are performing the same ritual.
They are families built into national entertainment infrastructure. They are symbols sustained through storytelling. They are dynasties that survive by letting audiences watch them fracture and reform in real time.
Because underneath the velvet and the spray tan, the tiaras and the contour, both shows are asking the same question.
What does it cost to belong to a family that is also a brand?
And what happens when the world feels entitled to watch you figure it out?
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